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In this article we provide a short comparison of Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar. Clarity and Hotjar are the two most widely used behaviour analysis tools for marketers and provide functionality such including session recordings and heatmaps.
According to the Microsoft Clarity website:
Clarity is a free, easy-to-use tool that captures how real people actually use your site. Setup is easy and you’ll start getting data in minutes. Clarity is a free service—forever. You will never run into traffic limits or be forced to upgrade to a paid version.
https://clarity.microsoft.com/
According to the Hotjar website:
“We help you understand how users behave on your site, what they need, and how they feel, fast. Hotjar is the leading solution for product teams who want to go beyond traditional web and product analytics so they can empathize with and understand their users—to connect the dots between what’s happening and why it happens, so they can improve the user experience (UX) and create customer delight.”
https://www.hotjar.com/about-us/
Clarity vs Hotjar Comparison
Heatmaps: Both Clarity and Hotjar offer heatmaps that visually represent user activity on a webpage, showing where users have clicked, moved their mouse, or scrolled. The heatmaps generated by these tools might have slight differences in visualization but essentially serve the same purpose.
Session Recordings: Both tools provide session recordings, allowing you to watch real user sessions on your website. This feature helps you understand how users are interacting with your site, including potential usability issues they may encounter.
Pricing: The most significant difference between the two offerings is that Microsoft Clarity is free to use without any restrictions on the number of websites or the number of user sessions recorded, whereas Hotjar offered both free and paid plans, with more advanced features and higher limits only available in paid plans.
| Functionality | Microsoft Clarity | Hotjar |
|---|---|---|
| User Session Recordings | Yes | Yes |
| Click Heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Tap Heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Scroll Depth Heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Area Heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Surveys | No | Yes |
| Incoming Feedback | No | Yes |
| Limits | None | Various |
| Integrations | GA, GTM, Optimzely, HubSpot, WordPress and many more. | GTM, WordPress, GA, Bing Webmaster and Microsoft Ads. |
| Pricing | Complete free, no limits | Free & paid plans |
Clarity vs Hotjar for WordPress
At the time of writing the Microsoft Clarity plugin has 10,000+ active installations, with the plugin last updated 3 months ago. For more information see https://wordpress.org/plugins/microsoft-clarity/.
Hotjar, at the time of writing, has over 100,000 active installations, indicating a considerably larger (9X) install base for the plugin. For more information is https://wordpress.org/plugins/hotjar/.
Tips for use
Both Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar provide a wealth of insights into user behaviour which can be leveraged to improve your websites, enhance the user experience, and ultimately increase conversions.
Here are a few simple suggestions:
- Leverage user recordings to see where someone spends more time than others, and adjust your messaging or where it sits on your page to increase conversion.
- Identify potential issues with your website’s design or functionality that could be hindering conversions
- Use scroll-depth maps to see how far someone scrolls before leaving a page
- If you find a specific piece of content on a page that people spend signficant time looking at, it may be worth moving it higher in the page
- Watch how users interact with your website in real-time in order to identify where users are getting stuck
Reviews
- Capterra Hotjar https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/163516/hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/1018691/microsoft-clarity
- G2 Hotjar https://www.g2.com/products/hotjar/reviews vs Clarity https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-microsoft-clarity/reviews
Articles
- Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar: All features compared
- We Tried Hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity: Here’s Our Feedback
- Microsoft Clarity vs Hotjar
Final thoughts
While both tools have their strengths and unique offerings, the best way to decide which one is right for your needs is to try them both. Fortunately, getting them up and running takes only a few minutes, allowing you to quickly see firsthand how they can help enhance your website’s user experience and boost your conversion rates.
If you have questions, I’d love to connect over LinkedIn or Twitter.
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Recent experiments include competitor SEO, AI-driven content, exit-intent modals and AB testing homepage headlines.
